Had a Big Mac once. All I could really taste was pickles and bread. Not a fan. Quarter Pounder with cheese is a much better sandwich in every possible way.
That’s what I always assumed. I get a quarter pounder once or twice per year. Never had a Big Mac.
The Big Mac is its own thing. If I’m at the drive-thru, I order a Quarter Pounder. If I’m sitting in the restaurant or taking home, I’ll order the Big Mac.
How about Uxmal? I hadn’t heard of it until visiting Yucatan, but IMHO it’s just as impressive as Chichen Itza, and Wikipedia puts it in the same league, along with Palenque, Tikal, Caracol. I thought that The Pyramid of the Magician (in the picture) was way cooler than Chichen’s main pyramid, the Temple of Kukulcán:
As a Gen Xer, I suspect the biggest reason why there are fewer of us is that most of our parents were of the generation that preceded the Boomers. There were fewer of the depression and wartime babies. Fewer people will have fewer kids.
On the decline in births from Baby Boomers to Gen X, I’d like an option for “Other,” given that a whole bunch of prime marriage-aged young men came out of active military service in the mid-40’s AND the Boomer generation includes 20 years of births, while Gen X has 15.
I also hadn’t realized that I’ve been the primary driver of a car from every decade from the 50’s through the 2010’s; since we bought our newest car in 2019 and we routinely keep cars for 10 years, it’s possible we won’t buy one in this decade!
For movies, I’m in favor of whichever option allows me to dress up least, so it’s the drive-in unless I can watch at home (if it became an option here again, I’d go just for old times’ sake).
There was a second drive-in on my side of town and its still-active website talks about that a lot but the place is totally inactive now with no movies listed. I don’t know if it had been started in response to the pandemic or not.
I write fiction, and I am a social worker. I actually hate heavy handed messaging in novels, but my works inevitably end up exploring ideas I find interesting and I can totally see someone blasting it for being too woke (and also not woke enough.)
For example with the first unpublished book (fantasy/sci-fi) there were themes of political oppression, political diplomacy, revolution, gender oppression, sexual assault, prostitution, racism and intersectional identity, etc. But I am most interested in where that stuff gets messy. A protagonist trying to rescue his revolutionary brother from a political prison even though he doesn’t identify with any of his brother’s nationalist rhetoric (and never ends up feeling differently.) A woman feeling alienated from a political movement she once worshiped. Different factions trying to control public political narratives. In my current WIP a revolutionary leader has to come to terms with the fact that due to trauma sustained as a political prisoner, he’s no longer fit to lead. Plus the whole movement is falling apart due to infighting.
I think in my series there is kind of a notion of what side is best to be on, with the story following the revolutionaries and people within their orbit, but I try not to answer questions for readers. I keep thinking about what King said about how quickly readers can spot a lie. They know when you’re trying to manipulate them and will resent you for it.
I truly despise when writers sacrifice character for rhetoric regardless of whether I agree with the author. I liked 90% of The Jungle but the ending made me want to throw it across the room.
Also, this is a comment on an older poll but I do not regret having children. I have a three year old boy who is like the sun. My world is significantly brighter when he’s in the room. We really can’t afford to have another child, but we made the decision not to have a second shortly after my son was born when we were really not in the best era of parenting - the first year of the pandemic sucked! I had PPD and I don’t particularly like babies. Given all that, my husband got the snip. In retrospect, would I have pushed for more kids? I don’t think so? I am 40. We have no logistical support. But if we were younger, maybe. But maybe not, because we can’t easily afford it without giving up a lot of free time. So I guess what I am saying is that in an alternate universe with several different conditions met I would have liked to have more children. Altogether, I am just eternally grateful for the one I’ve got. It’s amazing the difference between no kids and one kid. I can’t really put it into words but for me it’s like a constant source of light in the world that was never there before.
Actual graphs of birth rates:
I thought that birth rates peaked earlier, but it looks like it peaked between 1957 and 1961, both in terms of total births and births per 1000 women, then took a nosedive.
I’m Gen X and growing up virtually all of my classmates’ parents were Boomers like mine. I doubt that’s unusual for the youngest third of Gen X. Many of us have Millennial little siblings, though.
I’m several years into Gen X but because of a large-ish gap between me and my older siblings they are all Boomers. My mother is in the Silent Generation and my father is on the line with the Greatest. My family skewed older than almost all of my friends. I had a grandfather that was too old to serve in WWI.
That too 
In my local store, the cashier scans them but I bag them. There is a store I go to occasionally where they bag them for me and I end up instructing the baggers how to properly bag them. Why yes, I did win a national competition in the subject of training supermarket baggers. Why have the skill if I don’t use it?
“How would you pronounce Blacow Road?”
I voted “Other.” Of the four choices, “Black-cow” comes closest (it gets the vowel sounds right), but I would say “Black-cow” with two distinct K sounds (one at the end of “black” and one at the beginning of “cow”), which is not how I’d say “Blacow.”
I would say “Black-ow”
Bleah cow
I’ve never interfered, and never had anything close to a problem due to careless bagging. Either our stores have well trained people, or reports of eggs getting crushed by soup cans are highly exaggerated. I’m sure it’s happened to somebody somewhere (and I’m sure you all will pipe in with your stories) but in 45 years of shopping for groceries on this earth as an adult, I conclude it’s not a problem enough for me to want to bag my own food.
I would say “I don’t know how to pronounce that.” If I had to pronounce it anyway, I probably wouldn’t say it the same way twice. Didn’t vote.
Eggs are pretty well protected; but I have occasionally had bruised fruit.
I often have a significant, and sometimes a long, drive home. I carry a cooler in the car; but I can’t fit all the groceries in there, so I really need the cold stuff bagged separately. If it isn’t, I have to unload everything again when I get to the car in order to get the cold things into the cooler. – if you live five minutes from the store, of course, this is less of an issue.
ETA:
I’d probably have quite a bit of political messaging, but I’d try to put most of it in a form in which it was told by the story rather than in a lecture. Voted other.
Me - LAN, off the top of my head.
But the right way to pronounce the name of any locality is how it’s usually pronounced in its own immediate area.
Any bagger who had paid even a mote of attention in training should know to do this.
I usually bag my own.
True. And many of them do. But some of them don’t.
Many of the customers live close to the store, and probably don’t care.